#020 From music to no-code with Justin

[00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to the Code & Conquer podcast.

[00:00:24] Today we have Justin with us, the creator of Indie Hacker Project Tudor.

[00:00:29] We'll be diving into Justin's journey of transitioning from working in the music industry to becoming an indie hacker.

[00:00:35] He'll share the fascinating story behind Tudor, a platform for bite-sized education content and Q&As with experts.

[00:00:41] We'll explore how Justin addressed his own pain points to find a valuable business idea in the air tech space.

[00:00:47] Justin will also provide insights into his pricing and monetization strategies for Tudor.

[00:00:51] As we discuss the common challenge indie hackers face all the time by undercharging for their products and services,

[00:00:58] Justin shares his authentic experiences, struggles and wins from being an indie hacker with a day job and family commitments.

[00:01:05] And with that, let's jump right in.

[00:01:12] And welcome to a new episode of the Code & Conquer podcast.

[00:01:15] Today I have Justin with his Indie Hacker Project Qda with me, which I now learned pronouncing correctly.

[00:01:22] Justin, how did you end up here? What's your story?

[00:01:26] Okay, super long story, but I'm gonna tell a short version of it.

[00:01:32] I've worked in music for most of my career. I've been a songwriter for a long time and then

[00:01:39] around

[00:01:40] probably

[00:01:41] six years ago, I transitioned into the business side of music

[00:01:46] And in my day job, which I'm still involved in today

[00:01:51] basically got involved with startups in entertainment

[00:01:55] And I'd always been interested in tech, but I'd never really looked at it in detail

[00:02:00] But I started working with some startups and

[00:02:04] in an operational capacity

[00:02:06] And that really introduced me to

[00:02:08] building tech products

[00:02:10] What was interesting why I tell the story a bit is it was the opposite

[00:02:15] of bootstrapping 100% the opposite

[00:02:19] raising money

[00:02:20] spending a lot of money

[00:02:22] wastefully

[00:02:23] hiring dev agencies

[00:02:26] Making a product then scrapping it

[00:02:28] Not getting to launch

[00:02:31] product full of bloated features no testing

[00:02:35] Just insane looking back with what I know now insane

[00:02:40] I went through that process and saw the wastefulness of it

[00:02:44] And I started to

[00:02:46] I don't know what I read, but I began to be educated more about lean

[00:02:52] methodology lean approach to startups

[00:02:55] Scrappiness

[00:02:57] And when I was developing my own idea for cuedah originally I was going to

[00:03:02] Actually make the same some of the same mistakes again. I was looking to hire

[00:03:06] a dev agency

[00:03:08] Raise some money and fortunately an investor said to me you're crazy

[00:03:14] You should just build this in a weekend on bubble

[00:03:18] The no-code platform

[00:03:20] You just make it get it out there and see what people think

[00:03:24] And here's a person who can do it for you and she introduced me to

[00:03:28] A phenomenal guy everyone can follow on

[00:03:31] X called garrot scott. He's the founder of pipe dream

[00:03:35] Which is an unbelievable startup a hard way startup trying to

[00:03:39] Do hyper logistics?

[00:03:41] So his story is crazy, but on the side he actually was a bubble developer

[00:03:46] And has actually released quite a few incredible bubble projects

[00:03:50] I got on with him in about 24 hours. He's i'll bang this out in a couple of days

[00:03:55] And he did build the first kind of version of cuedah

[00:03:59] The very first kind of basic infrastructure

[00:04:01] Then his

[00:04:02] Startup got into tech stars and he couldn't finish it. He was like why don't you just learn this yourself?

[00:04:09] Just go and do it and up until that time i've got no technical background at all

[00:04:15] And I thought god, this is going to be very hard

[00:04:18] But why not try so that began probably at least a year of

[00:04:23] Learning bubble and for people that don't know and not to step on the toes of developers listening

[00:04:29] not to compare it to

[00:04:31] programming in an explicit sense, but actually bubble requires a lot of

[00:04:37] logical

[00:04:38] Thinking and abstraction. Yeah, it is a drag-and-drop

[00:04:42] Interface to some extent but to link the front to the back end

[00:04:46] Requires I expect very similar knowledge set to

[00:04:50] How developers are solving problems with code? So I think there are a lot of similarities. So it was a real struggle for me

[00:04:57] Actually, it wasn't just an easy

[00:05:00] Jump in it took endless nights to understand what garrot had done

[00:05:05] But i'm so glad I went through the pain because when I came out the other side

[00:05:10] Which was quite a while now

[00:05:12] I felt in control of my own product

[00:05:16] Which I just think is one of the greatest feelings for someone developing a product to be able to

[00:05:22] Quickly just go. Okay. I want to change this design. I want to

[00:05:28] Change this configuration in the database. I can do that. I can deploy

[00:05:33] For me as a creative person because I come from a creative background

[00:05:37] That was mind-blowing and incredibly liberating

[00:05:41] So full circle

[00:05:43] I came to indie hacking and the bootstrapping mentality through a lot of pain and

[00:05:49] like

[00:05:50] Miseducation

[00:05:51] So it's been a really interesting process and to even to this day

[00:05:56] I still work with startups in my job

[00:05:58] And I find it hard if with this tension because I still see a lot of the wasteful

[00:06:05] approach to building building new products

[00:06:08] I want to go into detail there, but maybe before we go into that so we just have the full context

[00:06:14] What is kuda what kind of platform did you build in the end with this?

[00:06:18] Absolutely. So is

[00:06:20] a platform for insights the heart of the my vision for the platform is

[00:06:27] That on the internet we have I would say the domination of

[00:06:31] fast food social media

[00:06:34] What I mean by that is high speed ephemeral content

[00:06:39] And I also like to talk about it as low nutrition content

[00:06:43] You can see it on a kind of axis on one side. You've got

[00:06:48] Educational content and then on another you've got entertainment content and I have no problem with entertainment content

[00:06:54] Of course, it has a place

[00:06:57] It brings a lot of humor and delight to people and I consume a lot of entertainment content

[00:07:03] However from a product perspective

[00:07:05] I actually don't like using x i've got to be honest that might be I don't know how people react to that

[00:07:10] But as a consumer to be scrolling through it and have to jump from tiny idea to tiny idea

[00:07:17] Super quick. It doesn't make me feel good. It disrupts my focus

[00:07:21] And I don't get

[00:07:24] A lot of depth of learning now there is learning content in there and that's what I enjoy

[00:07:29] Right, I do learn from particular teachers or educators and I and I follow those and I also value the most

[00:07:38] The community aspect of microblogging. That's what I go back to x for is the community aspect

[00:07:44] But as a platform to learn on I wanted I want something else and genuinely i'm building huda to fill a gap

[00:07:53] Where you go to

[00:07:55] It's still short form

[00:07:57] It's still bite-sized. It's digestible, but you learn from the greatest kind of educators

[00:08:04] that are

[00:08:05] on the planet releasing books

[00:08:07] Releasing products they could be entrepreneurs. They could be authors. They could be leaders

[00:08:12] I

[00:08:14] Do have a kind of grand vision that may seem ridiculous. I don't know but it's horizontal

[00:08:18] It's not just within tech

[00:08:20] It's going to be across science and history and it's unbundled educational content from some of these social media platforms

[00:08:27] I'd like to have a dedicated

[00:08:29] platform for short form learning

[00:08:33] multi-format text audio video and a facility to interact with the educator through

[00:08:40] Asking questions and asking very specific questions, right?

[00:08:43] I know that you are for example have avid karl on the platform

[00:08:47] And he's answering questions

[00:08:49] So right now avid on twitter is someone with like 120. I think

[00:08:54] 1000 followers and having access to him and asking a very specific question is hard, but there are people getting answers

[00:09:02] On specific questions on your platform, right?

[00:09:05] Exactly you this some the feature of q&a is not novel, right? You can do that on instagram

[00:09:12] You can do that on x

[00:09:15] One of the issues is that those insights are lost. They're lost in an ephemeral feed

[00:09:21] or they're hidden

[00:09:22] and I want

[00:09:24] A place not only for creators to store their high level insights

[00:09:29] But I also want more of a culture on the platform to give longer answers to give more nuance and not just

[00:09:36] really short snappy

[00:09:39] Just engagement focused kind of answers

[00:09:42] So with some creators, I think avid did it originally too. It was put on his link tree

[00:09:48] For example on the link in bio and I have a few other very large creators doing that

[00:09:53] And a lot of people are coming to their qda page

[00:09:56] Through seeing that so it's sitting alongside some of the other social media platforms

[00:10:01] So when I first saw that I thought that was amazing

[00:10:04] And if anything, that's kind of direction I need to go in and then at some point people will use qda

[00:10:10] That's the first point where they come in right? They're not coming from another platform

[00:10:14] That's what you want to or what you imagine that people just

[00:10:17] want this kind of content and just

[00:10:20] Put in the qda url into the browser and not come from another platform, right? Yeah, the vision is which is

[00:10:27] Such a hard problem to solve

[00:10:29] Is to get enough content velocity

[00:10:32] from enough sources

[00:10:35] Of such quality that people choose to spend some time

[00:10:40] there to learn

[00:10:42] Rather than in other places like social platforms. Yeah, there's part of the thesis which I can't say i've proven

[00:10:50] that i'm experimenting is

[00:10:52] to shift some time away from

[00:10:55] doom scrolling to

[00:10:57] nutritious

[00:10:59] learning

[00:11:00] And you already mentioned it there but

[00:11:03] You I have a rule that I always talk with my girlfriend

[00:11:07] Was also like building a product with me and I always say my rule with producing

[00:11:12] Indie hacker ideas that I follow and then I put work into

[00:11:16] My number one rule that always has to apply is it has to work with one user

[00:11:21] So every product i'm building works with one user and it doesn't need a social scale for example

[00:11:28] But you are building what I think is the most challenging type of startup, which is a b2c

[00:11:34] Mostly b2c social platform that doesn't work with one user. So what how do you handle this challenge?

[00:11:41] What's your thoughts on that?

[00:11:43] First of all, I think you've got to have a sense of humor, right?

[00:11:46] I listen to podcasts all the times in tech that everyone is just just loading on the idea of doing a consumer app

[00:11:53] It's like the worst thing you could possibly do

[00:11:56] The thing is

[00:11:57] This touches on maybe other things we're going to talk about like life philosophy

[00:12:02] Is i'm having fun, right?

[00:12:04] I love this area

[00:12:06] To do with learning and curiosity. I love it. I always have

[00:12:11] And i'm enjoying

[00:12:13] Every aspect of building this thing and marketing in it and trying to make it happen

[00:12:18] The downside for me

[00:12:20] Is not the end of the world if I fail

[00:12:24] I actually don't think there will be such a thing as failure because

[00:12:27] Whatever I do with cuedas as I continue to build it over the coming years

[00:12:31] It's already leading to loads of things

[00:12:34] relationships connections

[00:12:36] Talking about it other ideas. It's it's something for me as long as I can see the next kind of

[00:12:44] Light at the end of the tunnel just the next one that keeps me going for another week rather than

[00:12:50] Having i'm not sitting here going. Okay, i've got to reach 100 million users

[00:12:56] To succeed in a consumer app all I need to see to your point is

[00:13:01] Some small validations that it's useful

[00:13:05] And as long as i've got that then i'll just keep pushing to see if I can really get this flywheel going

[00:13:12] It's an immensely difficult problem

[00:13:14] But I do have high confidence that there's demand for high quality learning content in the short form format

[00:13:22] Got no doubt about that. This is very much about

[00:13:26] Can I get the marriage going between?

[00:13:29] ambitious learners

[00:13:31] and

[00:13:32] content creators educators who want to share knowledge

[00:13:36] Can I get that going quick enough to get a lot of content which would then attract people?

[00:13:42] Onto the platform and also separate subject, but technically can the app then support that and scale?

[00:13:48] There's a whole technical side to this but the technical part

[00:13:51] I just want to touch on that very quickly. It's not really a limit, right?

[00:13:55] I've just talked to louis pereira. I think two or three episodes ago

[00:14:00] He's building audiopen and he says that he doesn't really

[00:14:04] Notice a scaling problem there with the whole no code and bubble as a platform beneath that

[00:14:11] That's incredible. I've emailed we've had a couple emails with louis and I would love to talk to him at some point

[00:14:16] Massive respect in fact before he launched audiopen

[00:14:20] I followed read something great. I think was his prior project and I was always thinking to myself this guy is going to create something

[00:14:26] Amazing and then it happened quite quickly after that

[00:14:29] And it's wonderful to hear that about bubble because I think that people have had doubts about that

[00:14:35] I certainly don't think it's an issue in terms of the initial steps of having a breakout product

[00:14:41] At some point there probably are technical limitations

[00:14:44] With performance and also q2 maybe

[00:14:48] Might be more demanding than audiopen with its with bandwidth and video and things like that. We'll see

[00:14:55] Yeah, I probably wouldn't build the next facebook on on bubble

[00:14:58] But then again you would still be able to migrate away from it do a version two

[00:15:03] Which you and then you have to have to learn real coding i'm losing parentheses here and if people just listen

[00:15:10] Yeah, because getting back to your first point with bubble

[00:15:13] I wanted to look into it after I saw how louis did with bubble and I was like

[00:15:17] Maybe I can do some small stuff that I want to just

[00:15:20] Try out and I kind of don't have to program that stuff. I can just use bubble for that

[00:15:25] and my experience was that

[00:15:28] Even as a professional software developer for more than 10 years now

[00:15:32] It's you still have to learn it. You still have to learn it let you learn to developing before that

[00:15:37] Yeah, and it doesn't really provide any benefit for a developer. There are still the same building blocks

[00:15:44] You just have to drag and drop them instead of writing them down in code

[00:15:47] So yes, there are differences. Yes, I am probably more flexible with my code

[00:15:52] But the concept beneath that is pretty much identical. I think

[00:15:57] It's just yeah if you want to build something that scales to infinity

[00:16:01] Maybe code is the better idea, but most ideas will never get to that point

[00:16:06] So why not use bubble at the start?

[00:16:08] Yeah, and also you tell me but with copilot here and that kind of augmentation of development that you can

[00:16:15] Have with ai now

[00:16:17] That's a new thing in town entirely and I think bubble i'm guessing but bubble will have to

[00:16:24] Get on that boat quickly because soon in two years time one year's time

[00:16:28] We may I may be wanting to try text to code

[00:16:32] Which will be the next big thing which I am interested I am very interested that will be my technical innovation that we'll probably end on

[00:16:38] Yeah, so the tick thing is for me. I think not a limitation here what we I have that question further down

[00:16:44] But i'm still going to ask it now

[00:16:46] You like all the stuff that you're putting out on twitter like the tone the vibe of your tweets

[00:16:51] I have one here which says like my energy levels go up 100 times when I work on my startup

[00:16:55] I'm going to work my ass up for the next 10 years to make join kuda, which is the twitter handle

[00:17:00] so

[00:17:02] You are you're approaching this with a completely different tone

[00:17:06] Than most indie hackers do let's say most so you're building there

[00:17:10] There's this concept of a com company that is going around x from time to time

[00:17:15] And some people doing calm business while other indie hackers are like chasing the next product every two months

[00:17:21] What's your like? How did you get to the idea of?

[00:17:24] No, i'm not gonna try 10 different things with bubble. I'm not gonna build 10 different mvps

[00:17:29] Instead i'm going to go full on into kuda. What was your thought process behind that?

[00:17:35] There's so much to say about this

[00:17:37] The way I see the spectrum

[00:17:40] Is and and the pros and cons and the kind of the weaknesses and strengths on both sides

[00:17:45] briefly, I think is worth talking about

[00:17:48] all the way let's say to the left in the camp of

[00:17:52] Do 12 startups in one year

[00:17:54] I think that's a good way to go about it

[00:17:57] I think that's a good way to go about it

[00:18:00] So if you're a developer

[00:18:02] And just see what flies and then discard right the whole small bets thing

[00:18:09] I totally get it. If your motive is you want to

[00:18:13] Make an internet business to support your life that makes

[00:18:17] A load of sense. You've got to quickly find a way

[00:18:20] To revenue right and to find something that's viable

[00:18:24] I think that's a good way to use a kind of controversial word promiscuity meaning

[00:18:29] You start this then you see the next craze and you jump on that and you flip between this and that

[00:18:36] And you don't go deep

[00:18:39] in one kind of

[00:18:40] Zone

[00:18:41] I think that's the risk now people that do that would have to say whether that's true

[00:18:46] But i've certainly seen people fly around onto the next kind of train and i'm not sure

[00:18:52] That's a helpful

[00:18:54] On the other end of the spectrum

[00:18:57] If you're you have a vision of a product that you feel needs to exist in the world

[00:19:02] By definition if it doesn't exist, I think it's not gonna I don't think it's something that could just manifest in a weekend

[00:19:10] personally

[00:19:11] At least you can make a product in the weekend. You can make the idea but to actually

[00:19:17] Persevere and find product market fit

[00:19:21] Find your customer base it's gonna take a while and for that you need

[00:19:26] motivation dedication

[00:19:28] And you need to

[00:19:30] Love it. I i'm a massive believer in

[00:19:33] You need to love what you're doing. I think louis probably said something similar. I've seen him talk about it

[00:19:40] You've got you could start something in a weekend, but in one month's time are you going to be waking up?

[00:19:45] And you get some rejection

[00:19:48] And you still want to do it

[00:19:50] The reason why I gravitated around kuda is

[00:19:54] All my life. I've loved learning curiosity

[00:19:58] Sharing knowledge. It's just a personal passion of mine

[00:20:02] and

[00:20:03] There were all kinds of steps to getting to the point of kind of the nugget and the atom of qa

[00:20:09] Why i'm focusing on that why I believe in it

[00:20:12] I just love

[00:20:13] I love this area

[00:20:16] And i'm in it to just see what I can do over the long term

[00:20:21] Can I build a business doing it? Let's see

[00:20:25] Let's just see but it's not going to happen with my constraints, which we'll get to in a second

[00:20:30] Of keeping my job to support my family

[00:20:33] It's necessarily going to take time and

[00:20:36] Would I have been different like in my early 20s before kids?

[00:20:40] Yeah, maybe I would have tried one thing and then jumped to another if it wasn't working

[00:20:45] I don't know

[00:20:46] But i'm really happy on that kind of going deep. I would just add one last point that ties the two together

[00:20:53] I believe that you can stay on one project in one zone. So it looks like you're not making multiple bets

[00:20:59] But that's actually not true

[00:21:00] Within the context of that one bet

[00:21:03] You can keep making

[00:21:05] loads of small bets

[00:21:07] So I have been making a load of small bets ui ux level. I started with audio

[00:21:14] I've added in text i've now added in video. Those are all like iterative

[00:21:19] experiments and in that sense you're

[00:21:22] Derisking you're searching around to find where there could be traction where there's positive signal

[00:21:29] There is a way to marry these two things

[00:21:32] Together does that make sense?

[00:21:34] I just was thinking of another thing that some people that stay with one product do a lot

[00:21:39] Of course some of them already know that they had results and they had some mr

[00:21:43] Right, but I just was thinking of i'm not sure what his twitter handle is

[00:21:47] It's ollie's his name is ollie and he's one of the two founders of is it called testimonial? No tenja i-o

[00:21:54] testimonial platform

[00:21:56] And what a lot of these guys are doing what I think is a great idea because my mind

[00:22:00] starts to wander around when i'm on one product all the time

[00:22:04] to

[00:22:05] Market their product which costs money they are doing like smaller tools that they put on the website of that product

[00:22:13] Just to market it through that free traffic coming in and the tools obviously being something

[00:22:19] Adjacent to the actual product. I think that's a great idea for people who are like me

[00:22:24] Who can't stay with one thing that they have to do all the time?

[00:22:27] Okay, then think of

[00:22:29] Of a way of like producing small little tools that you can put on your website of your main product

[00:22:36] That are free or maybe just cost one dollar

[00:22:39] Usage something like that and use that as a funnel for your main project

[00:22:43] I think that's something that a lot of people are doing as well to get away from the big product

[00:22:48] Definitely like it does all come back to motivation. If your primary motivation is to make money

[00:22:55] Then that might determine some of the routes that you go down if your motivation is you want to make money plus

[00:23:01] You want to do something that you love?

[00:23:03] That's going to affect your decision of what you do

[00:23:07] All I know is after like several years of developing this I wake up or late at night and I have

[00:23:13] energy for it and

[00:23:15] Again, if in two years time

[00:23:18] It's an abject failure. I I would hope I don't look back and go. I regret that

[00:23:22] I don't think I will I think that's such a great outlook to have and I think

[00:23:28] Like this podcast always makes me think about stuff that i'm doing

[00:23:33] And what i'm doing with my product and stuff you're gonna toby you're gonna come out this weekend and announce a 10 year

[00:23:38] decade product

[00:23:41] Yeah, maybe yeah one thing we did it wasn't like a 10 year plan

[00:23:45] But one thing we just did is we I had to cancel the the launch

[00:23:50] Because

[00:23:51] I talked about this with arvin tsundere who's also been on the show the difference between an mvp

[00:23:57] And what's the abbreviation mlp minimum?

[00:24:01] lovable product. Yeah, and I

[00:24:04] Was struggling with some decisions that we have to that we did have to make for a product

[00:24:09] So I was thinking a lot about pricing. I was thinking a lot about the incorporation

[00:24:14] That said that has to happen. I'm in germany. They love their tech stuff

[00:24:18] We have to have a good tech. Sorry, good tech spaces here

[00:24:21] Yeah, and we need to have a cooperation in some

[00:24:24] Sense in some form to like the first dollar arrives and we still we already have to have that in place

[00:24:30] Like germany doesn't have much leeway there. So I was away from actually building a product for two weeks

[00:24:36] And I set myself a deadline which ran out yesterday, which was march 21st

[00:24:41] And I was disappointed but on the other hand the deadline did what it

[00:24:46] What it should have done which is motivate me to solve the bigger problems

[00:24:51] Once I have to solve and then go back to okay now

[00:24:54] I have a plan now I can develop the platform and then I can launch it when it's ready

[00:25:00] Because when I told the people on twitter what I just told you I had to cancel the launch and push it further down

[00:25:06] The line some people were like just release it today. Just release it the way it is

[00:25:10] Just release something that is not even a perfect like a done mvp

[00:25:15] and to your point

[00:25:17] With people that can release mvps that are very small

[00:25:20] Look very shitty have one half feature baked into it

[00:25:24] And then the other side being never launching because they have 100 features they want to deliver

[00:25:29] I feel

[00:25:30] Not so much on the left side where I can just push out an mvp that has nothing in it

[00:25:36] But I also don't want to become what I have been in the past like the hundred feature guy

[00:25:40] Exactly, I think there's something in between there, but there's definitely something in between that

[00:25:45] I think all of the advice about launching is wise

[00:25:48] It stops the endless creep of development of the add this add that on

[00:25:53] And it forces it's like a forcing function

[00:25:56] at the same time

[00:25:58] Launch won't change the game

[00:26:00] For you necessarily even if you have a little bit of traction

[00:26:04] There may be fundamentals about the product that

[00:26:08] That are going to hit a limit after launch

[00:26:10] so you why I say that is you

[00:26:13] You perhaps could iterate before some big launch to solve those

[00:26:17] So for example, if you haven't addressed how your product's going to get distributed or marketed

[00:26:22] That's a very important thing. I think to think about at the product development stage

[00:26:26] Before you even launch it what aspects of this product are going to be talk about and market on your behalf

[00:26:33] I think there's some kind of fine line in between those two things so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it

[00:26:39] I have to dig in there because I think that's an interesting thought that you just had that you just mentioned is

[00:26:45] thinking about the marketing strategy before launching so my

[00:26:50] Understanding would be that's something I can do after launch. Why do you think someone should do it before launch?

[00:26:56] Because I think it's critical

[00:26:58] I think it's product plus distribution that gets something out there, especially in this

[00:27:05] insanely noisy world of

[00:27:08] Thousands of apps and thousands of new products coming out. So there's got to be an a strategy baked in

[00:27:15] Perhaps even at the product level. I'll give you an example with CUDA

[00:27:19] Is that I quickly realized when I was making it

[00:27:22] Okay, if I get an influential creator on to answer questions, they're likely to share it

[00:27:29] And so immediately there's a distribution channel

[00:27:32] That's not just reliant on

[00:27:34] Me or CUDA, right?

[00:27:36] Immediately there is pathways to reach people and that's worked

[00:27:41] That certainly

[00:27:42] Will work as it expands. So I thought about that at the beginning even coming to the idea of

[00:27:49] having user questions in the product to

[00:27:52] A creator because they originally began as curated clips from podcasts

[00:27:57] That's how it began at the very inception and so I moved so that's an example of how I moved I didn't

[00:28:03] Integrate that feature only because it had a distribution aspect to it, but it was certainly compelling

[00:28:08] And so I think it's important if you're in the product development stage to think ahead

[00:28:14] And think about the channels that you're going to that people are going to hear about your product through

[00:28:20] And if there's if you haven't even considered that I don't think it's enough just to bang it onto product hunt

[00:28:25] Is my point, right?

[00:28:27] I think also the notion of

[00:28:29] Launching on product hunt the moment you have an mvp ready is I think wrong

[00:28:34] It's my like my experience from products that i've seen launching

[00:28:38] At least you need some traction so you can have users up voting you on product hunt

[00:28:43] Which is hard to do because most people don't care about product hunt when they are users of your product

[00:28:48] The bigger thing that you can use is having an audience

[00:28:52] On any platform for most of us it's x

[00:28:55] That then can push your product on product hunt

[00:28:58] I long I actually launched like my first product that I did as an indie hacker was just a notion template

[00:29:04] for assessing

[00:29:06] the mental health status in your team

[00:29:09] So that was something that I was really passionate about but I had

[00:29:13] I think at that point 30 followers on twitter and they weren't project managers of large companies

[00:29:18] So I launched it and I just launched it on product hunt because someone told me to

[00:29:23] and having no audience having

[00:29:26] Largely failed to find a way to target the people that actually would use this

[00:29:31] Of course, the thing didn't get any upwards on product hunt

[00:29:35] So I think the whole notion of you have to launch on product hunt like the first day that you launch your product

[00:29:41] That's kind of

[00:29:42] Ill-advised, I guess. Yeah for me, I've never launched on product hunt yet

[00:29:47] For me, it's not so much when people talk about launch

[00:29:50] I think you need to get your product into users hands

[00:29:53] You need to get it onto the internet whether you have a phase where it's experimental and you're iterating and developing it

[00:30:00] Just freely before you end up launching you can launch multiple times then I think it's fine

[00:30:05] I think what's important is you get out of the fantasy

[00:30:08] About what you think about your product as the maker because that's always challenging

[00:30:13] It's like a teenager that writes poetry in their secret diary and thinks it's better than shakespeare

[00:30:20] But won't show anyone right? It's that preciousness that we all have

[00:30:24] As makers you have it across all of the creative industries. It's the same thing

[00:30:28] And the sooner you get your stuff out and someone other than your own mom

[00:30:33] Or your family member can tell you

[00:30:36] Something about it then that is really useful information

[00:30:40] Did you do with qda? Did you do anything like i'm not sure if you read the mom test the book by

[00:30:45] fifth gerald something who

[00:30:47] Went into the mom test describes that you shouldn't ever ask your mom what she thinks about your product because obviously she'll love it

[00:30:54] But go to other people and actually ask them what their problem is and then not mention your solution

[00:30:59] Just ask what they would want

[00:31:01] Did you do any like anything like that with qda before you launched it?

[00:31:05] No, I didn't and you've probably seen jason freed on qda and i've interviewed him and I

[00:31:12] I was already converted to his point of view. I think before I I listened even more to

[00:31:17] Him banging on about this but there's actually a clip on qda where he's got a real chip on his shoulder about ideas

[00:31:23] Ideas just are nothing that you can ask someone. What do you think about?

[00:31:28] Do you have this problem?

[00:31:30] But until the product is made the particularly like delivery mechanism that you've got the solution in

[00:31:37] Yes, it might give you some indicators, right?

[00:31:41] But it but you don't really know until the product I think is in the user's hands

[00:31:47] So if you're giving you've made something quickly, however, rough it is. It could be super rough

[00:31:53] It could be an excel spreadsheet doing something right?

[00:31:56] It doesn't wouldn't necessarily even have to have design as long as it's being used by someone and they're like, oh wow

[00:32:01] That's useful for x great

[00:32:04] but if you just interview someone and go do you

[00:32:07] struggle with

[00:32:09] X you'll get some people going. Yeah, I really do. I really do struggle with that. Would this be a solution?

[00:32:15] Yeah, maybe it might be

[00:32:17] But I do think that there's fantasy in that maybe as initial research helpful to then

[00:32:23] Quickly go and make something but i'm in jason's camp of just make it

[00:32:28] It's interesting because that's that's that's a very user-centered approach which a lot of people are doing right?

[00:32:33] but skipping the first part where you go i'm going to

[00:32:37] Validate this product before I've even built it

[00:32:40] Those are like the indie hackers that build are just building landing pages and try to sell

[00:32:45] Pre-sell the product that they haven't built yet and then they're building it once the money

[00:32:50] Like at least a thousand dollars of subscriptions have been bought something like this that's running against it i do yeah, right

[00:32:57] I think that makes

[00:32:59] I think that makes sense that that technique of putting a landing page out for quick validation

[00:33:04] It's just common sense business, right? If you my son

[00:33:08] We live near a car park here and i'm always encouraging him to be an entrepreneur. He's 10 years old

[00:33:14] And I said listen people are walking back from the car park all day

[00:33:19] If you put a table outside there and take some stuff out the garage

[00:33:23] For kids on a saturday, I reckon you're gonna sell some stuff and he came back with 80 pounds, which it is a lot

[00:33:32] It was a really quick way of finding because there was traffic there

[00:33:35] There was distribution and what he had to sell was good. So it makes a lot of sense

[00:33:41] I just

[00:33:42] I think that you

[00:33:44] I just think there's a lot of different ways of doing this and I was just pausing there because

[00:33:50] You can have like founder led insights intuitions about something that you spent a lot of time in

[00:33:58] That you maybe didn't need to go and interview

[00:34:01] People about it doesn't mean you won't have any contact with that audience and that user base

[00:34:07] It's just that you can just you've got an idea. You've got your own itch, which you hear this a lot

[00:34:12] You've got your own itch. It's a problem for you

[00:34:15] And you want to see that in the world

[00:34:17] So you just go and make it then you go and find people like you and you test that so

[00:34:21] I'm more in that camp like in the case of q2 particularly

[00:34:25] I want an app that I can open each day. That's got really high quality

[00:34:30] educational short form

[00:34:32] Content and none of the noise. That's what I want and does that make sense?

[00:34:37] Totally because i'm doing the same thing the product i'm building now

[00:34:41] At least the landing page is live now

[00:34:42] The rest is still in development and will probably launch in april is called repodcasted which is for this podcast

[00:34:49] It has been I just answered the question that you had on qda

[00:34:53] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just saw at the start of this interview. I told you maybe we'll come back to this

[00:34:58] This is the point where we come back to this. I I answered that question on qda like half an hour ago

[00:35:03] where I went

[00:35:05] For I wanted to do something in the ai space. I did a first product that wasn't really something I needed myself

[00:35:12] And so I wasn't motivated to do it

[00:35:15] After some time, right?

[00:35:16] You have this first like the pink glasses face where every new product is awesome and then it falls up

[00:35:21] Falls down

[00:35:22] At some point and then I got I had this podcast which is now over a year old

[00:35:27] And I was thinking like how can I automate part of the podcast creation process? How can I put?

[00:35:33] The massive insights that we have in this podcast out somewhere else and from that own from my problem came

[00:35:41] Repodcasted as a solution. So I think most of the products that I've built

[00:35:47] I have not completed all of them, but most of the the ones i've built and have stayed motivated with

[00:35:53] Are the ones that scratch my own itch where I don't I don't need to reach out to someone else

[00:35:58] Because I know that I will at least have one user which is me

[00:36:03] Exactly, and then see what other people need. Yeah

[00:36:06] If I could just tie it back to the spectrum we talked about the small bets versus the decade long

[00:36:11] Yeah is the kind of the reaction I have about it is

[00:36:15] Fine you bang up a landing page you test whether there's demand, right?

[00:36:20] But does that answer the question?

[00:36:22] Are you going to be wanting to do this in two months time if you've if if it's something that you've loved

[00:36:28] And you're doing it great. That sounds good

[00:36:31] But if you're just trying to ride the next kind of hype cycle, that's a very fine that might suit that person

[00:36:37] They're just going they're trying to identify

[00:36:39] Quick opportunities to turn and almost flip

[00:36:43] internet businesses quickly

[00:36:45] It's just a strategy it would be similar to

[00:36:47] If you look at the investment markets the financial markets, you've got a full spectrum of day traders down to milliseconds

[00:36:56] Very short frequency traders

[00:36:58] Up to then day traders which comparatively are then that's quite a long time millisecond traders

[00:37:04] But then you've got people that trade on a multi-week frame

[00:37:08] And then of course as you keep going out, then you get to investors

[00:37:12] Who are looking at five to ten year time frames?

[00:37:16] so I think

[00:37:18] It's probably incorrect to say that one route

[00:37:21] Is the gospel and the one that people should follow I think you've probably got to marry these approaches to your temperament

[00:37:29] To your interests and your motivations. I feel quite

[00:37:33] That's how I see it. Actually. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of there's just room for us all

[00:37:38] And also those are all like fair filters that you have to go through

[00:37:42] Is it fitting my mindset and stuff? But also one big thing is how much time do you have? I can't

[00:37:48] Do like a new project every two months if I have like you two wife's

[00:37:54] Sorry

[00:37:55] two kids, sorry

[00:37:57] Two kids one wife and the day job like that

[00:38:01] You will not and it's not meant as a mean insult to you. It's just something that is

[00:38:06] I think objectively true

[00:38:08] You will never be as fast as a 20 year old who has five days a week to to build their product

[00:38:13] And I don't have the time as well. I also have my freelance gigs and

[00:38:17] a partner that I want to spend time with and other hobbies. So

[00:38:21] Yeah, I think

[00:38:23] One you have to place yourself mindset wise on that scale but also on your time scale

[00:38:28] That's a very good point because I talked about temperament, but I didn't mention

[00:38:33] The constraints that you're under as much a factor

[00:38:37] In determining what approach you take the constraints you're under certainly

[00:38:42] Certainly, I said if I was under a different circumstance

[00:38:46] I may make maybe making multiple bets at the same time like qda plus one or two other

[00:38:53] Um projects, but that's impossible for me. Yeah, what is your i'm always I had phil keller on who also has

[00:38:59] I think two kids and and wife one wife

[00:39:02] one wife

[00:39:03] only one wife and i'm just

[00:39:06] I always think i'm i'm not the biggest i'm not a high energy person

[00:39:09] So I need some hobbies that are low low laying and I need some time off

[00:39:14] And I cannot imagine myself having kids because I don't think I can handle the stress that adds to my life

[00:39:20] Apart from other reasons why I would choose having kids or not

[00:39:24] But you have this great tweet that I want to read very quickly

[00:39:28] Which is if tired sleep if hungry eat if dirty wash

[00:39:32] If bored just build a startup with a day job and young kids

[00:39:36] How do you manage to to have any time to work on your indie hacking? Like how does that work?

[00:39:41] I I think I tweeted something else that hopefully I hopefully I do persuade you to have kids because it's a wonderful thing

[00:39:48] But I would say that i've had a few friends in my life and I was in this camp for a bit

[00:39:53] Who were they were this was their kind of point of view

[00:39:56] Oh, are you interested? Would you like to have children? I'm not ready. I've got to sort out my career first

[00:40:02] I've got to sort out my my shit

[00:40:04] I've got to get all my ducks in a row and then i'll have kids

[00:40:08] And I said the thing is you may just indefinitely delay

[00:40:13] When you have children you have a family. Yes, it's a different circumstance. It's a different constraint, but there's no greater motivation

[00:40:22] to be hyper productive

[00:40:25] Because you have to be

[00:40:27] If you're still ambitious, you still have personal dreams

[00:40:31] And you also want to be a good father. You've somehow got to marry

[00:40:35] those

[00:40:36] Two things

[00:40:38] So I don't know how i've done it

[00:40:40] I definitely have less sleep than I used to but it goes back to where we started. I can't overestimate this for me

[00:40:47] Over emphasize this sorry for me is you've got to love what you're doing because

[00:40:52] That is the only reason why at 10 o'clock at night when my family's asleep I can

[00:40:59] Open up the computer again after a full day of work

[00:41:03] Spending time with my family and i'm like, okay i'm gonna go now for three hours

[00:41:08] Sometimes one am two am

[00:41:11] And do that multiple times a week

[00:41:14] Because I love doing it and then so I have energy for it

[00:41:18] That for me is the secret if I was just doing some

[00:41:23] Startup that I thought might make me

[00:41:26] Five thousand dollars and then i'd want to sell it in a month's time. I'm not sure I would probably feel quite desperate

[00:41:32] About that and I would struggle how to manage that but because i've chosen

[00:41:37] financial security

[00:41:39] for the time being

[00:41:42] That's

[00:41:43] Taken a lot of weight

[00:41:45] Away from me a lot. And so that's an important element. Definitely

[00:41:49] I think if that was taken away

[00:41:52] and I was

[00:41:54] Completely reliant on indie hacking

[00:41:57] You probably would see me do different things understandably

[00:42:01] Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think another thing

[00:42:04] Correct me if i'm wrong, but I don't think the q dot costs money in any way right now

[00:42:08] I can't spend money. It's completely free. I came into 2024

[00:42:13] beginning to think about

[00:42:15] business side of it

[00:42:17] It's going to be quite a journey. But the idea is that

[00:42:22] my first goal

[00:42:24] Which is hard enough is to get content velocity going so a lot of new content coming on the platform say weekly

[00:42:30] And i've got a strategy around that that i'm pursuing this

[00:42:34] At the moment in the next couple of months

[00:42:37] Once if I can succeed in that

[00:42:39] I would love to start exploring like micro products micro lessons

[00:42:45] bundled into a product

[00:42:47] So it might be five q a's that are exclusive with a creator a type of master class

[00:42:54] A kind of breaking topic perhaps that people are really interested in knowing about from that particular person

[00:43:00] And trying to get a product together. So that's the like direction of travel as a business

[00:43:05] I've got no intention of it being in the future

[00:43:09] dependent on ad dollars or anything like that

[00:43:12] i'm going to explore

[00:43:14] I have to first get to the point where there's enough value and that's a hard enough challenge

[00:43:19] And if I can get over that then i'll really focus next on on what the business can be

[00:43:26] I think you have a lot of freedom there to experiment as long as you don't have

[00:43:31] A huge cost driver, right?

[00:43:32] So as long as not everyone uploads like four hour long videos and your storage gets expensive

[00:43:38] Yeah, you don't have ai right now. So that doesn't isn't a really big cost

[00:43:42] So there's a lot of room to experiment with stuff, right?

[00:43:45] yeah, absolutely

[00:43:47] We've touched on kind of the the mission of qdip but on from a business perspective

[00:43:52] I think knowledge a person's knowledge has value

[00:43:56] And I think that there should be an exchange and we haven't touched on edtech and obviously

[00:44:01] Pl- many platforms doing courses and they've had a lot of success. So there's clearly demand for kind of

[00:44:08] formal learning

[00:44:10] I'm just gonna and there are apps like masterclass that have gone high end production with learning

[00:44:16] i'm just

[00:44:17] experimenting with kind of short form

[00:44:20] Content on

[00:44:22] From well-known educators and i'm just going to see if products can be made out of that and hopefully people find value

[00:44:30] And that's pretty much the thing that we talked about earlier, right? The mini products that are built into your bigger product, right?

[00:44:36] Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely

[00:44:39] It's the side of the indie hacking community that I really appreciate like I i'm always liking people's

[00:44:45] Posts where they've made money and posting about it because I know how hard that must be

[00:44:54] And I really admire that they focused on the business element

[00:44:58] is a core thing and

[00:45:01] Where I started seeing so much waste in startups pre-revenue startup and going on a journey myself

[00:45:08] I know that if qdip is going to go places like one of the top goals would be for it to be profitable

[00:45:13] That would be one of the top goals for a sustaining a business that sustains itself

[00:45:20] Yeah

[00:45:20] I think that would be like the the number one goal for me if I had a product like that

[00:45:25] Yeah, that's just if it carries itself, then it's already like success in some way

[00:45:31] Yeah, I again go back to jason stuff. I I love the way he constantly reminds tech

[00:45:38] people

[00:45:39] That this is business. It's doing an internet business

[00:45:43] Has the same fundamentals of having an ice cream ban. Do you know what I mean though? Yeah, sure

[00:45:49] Yeah, it's cost and it's revenue

[00:45:51] It's distribution who are you selling to who needs the ice cream in that moment? What's the weather like what's the environment?

[00:45:58] It's it's all of these simple things. So i've i've really appreciated that reminder that's definitely shifted

[00:46:05] In me over the last say five months

[00:46:07] Whereas before it was just I wasn't even considering it

[00:46:11] And regarding like the one thing is getting people on the platform who will pay for the product

[00:46:16] Or who will pay for qda itself?

[00:46:18] But how do you get like how first how do you get educators on the platform and what is?

[00:46:23] The play on that side you have a marketplace or a social platform from from both sides where you need creators and also listeners

[00:46:31] Exactly. Yeah, how do you get the people to go on qda and answer questions?

[00:46:35] I read that you try to get steps steph smith on the platform, which I love as a podcast host

[00:46:42] How do you?

[00:46:43] Get people like that to go to qda and answer questions

[00:46:46] Yeah, so steph smith came on with calvin rossa her husband who's also an amazing creator

[00:46:51] They they run the podcast shit. You don't learn in school

[00:46:55] i'm a huge fan of steph even the podcast work she's doing at a 16 and she came on

[00:47:01] originally with calvin again an

[00:47:04] Generally, this is how it's happened. It's an email from me

[00:47:08] To them I find out how to email

[00:47:11] them and i've got a format to

[00:47:16] To a brief kind of email explaining what qda is. It's very brief

[00:47:21] But what it does do is it highlights what I think are the most kind of attractive features from their perspective

[00:47:27] One is it's asynchronous

[00:47:30] And I think steph like that, I think she even said in a reply oh really interested in the async

[00:47:35] element because for some very well for a lot of busy creators, they're just

[00:47:40] They're just so busy and don't want to be pinned down in a particular moment

[00:47:44] They want to answer in their own time. So I think that was an attractive element

[00:47:48] The other thing is just knowledge sharing a lot of educators and creators really actually want that intimacy with

[00:47:54] Their their audience

[00:47:56] You can get it obviously on some of these platforms like x you can get that interaction

[00:48:01] But going back to everything i've said it can be very ephemeral and not really give you time for nuance

[00:48:08] so the audio element the

[00:48:11] Asynchronousity of it

[00:48:13] Is generally being attractive and also just there's a gap. There's a gap there

[00:48:17] even though that this feature exists on some of the

[00:48:21] major platforms

[00:48:23] I don't think

[00:48:24] That they'd received an email from one that's dedicated to

[00:48:28] async q a

[00:48:29] So there's that and then other

[00:48:32] amazing

[00:48:33] Creators i've got on for example

[00:48:36] a world-renowned

[00:48:37] paleontologist in science steve bruschetti

[00:48:40] He came on because he was launching his book and I would pitch his publisher

[00:48:45] so I pitch publishers

[00:48:47] That when someone's launching they could come on and do an ama

[00:48:51] And that would be a massive tip that I passed on for anyone that wants to

[00:48:56] It would apply to getting people on podcasts or engaging with your product if it's something creators could come on

[00:49:02] Is go to people that are launching things because naturally they want to promote

[00:49:08] They want to share what they're doing and it's what in that moment is what they're most passionate about

[00:49:13] So jason freed

[00:49:15] He agreed to an interview with me

[00:49:18] But it I pitched him right at the point where he was launching once.com

[00:49:22] And I said do you want to come and talk about the landing page?

[00:49:25] You want to come and talk about how you wrote that?

[00:49:29] And I think that it was just the right moment. So it's a really helpful

[00:49:34] thing to reach out to people

[00:49:37] When you're sensitive to what they're trying to do in their work

[00:49:42] I think that's a very good idea

[00:49:43] I think that's something I have to write down for my own product because I can see us going that marketing direction

[00:49:50] That's an awesome idea

[00:49:51] Yeah

[00:49:52] Yeah, and then I have to think about and then so much is you're building up layers of

[00:49:58] credibility you're building up layers of you have

[00:50:02] Done something with this person. You've done something with this person when you go to the next creator, then they can at least see that

[00:50:09] And go, okay, I don't need to think too much about it. This is likely to be worth my time

[00:50:14] But at the same time you also have to be totally willing to get rejections and i'm too busy. I've had creators

[00:50:21] Start the process then bail out

[00:50:23] and

[00:50:24] Not hear from them

[00:50:26] You did but I just carry on I understand how busy they are. So it's fine

[00:50:31] The process of getting you on the podcast has also been like five of five months

[00:50:36] I think which is totally fine, right? I never thought of of that as a as a bad thing

[00:50:41] Our communication has always been positive on the way here and I have i've had that with other creators

[00:50:47] I'm obviously usually contacting people that are bigger than me

[00:50:50] In followers or in like how far along they are on a handy hacking journey

[00:50:55] They have other things to do than answer me then I have gotten no answer from people

[00:50:59] I've gotten a no from people not much though

[00:51:02] Most people want to be on the podcast or don't have the time to do it

[00:51:06] But a lot of people just answer very friendly

[00:51:09] I don't have the time. I'm not a i'm not a podcasting person. I had that answer which is all fine

[00:51:14] It's not I think if you have a business where you have to reach out to people

[00:51:19] You have to be okay with getting rejected. I think that's not a bad thing

[00:51:22] Yeah, I appreciate those little replies. I like them because i'm absolutely fine of just moving on and staying in touch and

[00:51:30] So that's good. I don't do I don't do anything like reaching out on linkedin or

[00:51:35] dms

[00:51:36] Sometimes if it's the only way to contact them

[00:51:40] But I try and just try and write a thoughtful email and then polite follow-ups

[00:51:46] Seven to ten days later couple and then if there's just no response. I'll probably leave it at that point

[00:51:52] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's how I have done it with my guests and I still hand pick

[00:51:56] The indie hacking guests that come on this podcast

[00:51:59] So I have a list that I go through and for people that have said

[00:52:02] I'm I can't in december. Can you contact me again in february? There's reminders and stuff like that

[00:52:07] So you can do this very

[00:52:09] Calmly and without being feeling attacked yourself, right? It's just part of the business

[00:52:15] Absolutely, and I think I was talking to to did a different interview with sakshi shukla

[00:52:21] Earlier on today who's a phenomenal creator from india and we were talking about

[00:52:27] Seth godin's advice about the internet being an infinite bowling alley

[00:52:32] Which is this idea that

[00:52:34] You can turn up every day and take a new bowl and it will always be there the day after

[00:52:39] And it doesn't matter how you do

[00:52:41] It's not a one once event. So just get used to

[00:52:46] Everything not going according to plan

[00:52:49] Just keep turning up and keep bowling and have a good time

[00:52:53] And it's amazing what can happen

[00:52:55] And I I really like that philosophy

[00:52:57] I didn't know if you wanted to talk about mistakes or perfectionism, but I've definitely that's been a struggle for me

[00:53:03] I started off

[00:53:05] And still have this tendency of trying to make everything detailed and perfect

[00:53:11] But over the last I would say year and a half

[00:53:13] I've really tried to move into more of a mindset of just do stuff

[00:53:18] and this covers everything from tweeting to

[00:53:21] appearing doing pod interviews

[00:53:24] Trying new stuff at a product level

[00:53:27] Not bothering to go on and correct that bug that I know is there the minor bugs that doesn't really

[00:53:33] Interrupt with anything more moving into philosophy. Listen, if someone's got a problem with that they're going to tell me

[00:53:38] So it's been quite a journey to come out of that camp

[00:53:42] It's a real it's a psychological thing. Isn't it? It's a it's a big deal

[00:53:48] Yeah, and you can get stuck in it

[00:53:49] Like I have a lot of problems with perfectionism, like I said the last two weeks i've been

[00:53:55] Thinking researching a lot about pricing. We obviously we have to be profitable with ai stuff, but

[00:54:02] You can in in germany would you would say which would be like thinking about something so much that it breaks apart

[00:54:08] Is a loose translation of that and you can like with if you let perfectionism get into your system like that

[00:54:15] It can completely

[00:54:17] stop the process of

[00:54:19] Developing or working on your idea, right?

[00:54:21] You can just be stuck in a place where you don't know what the solution is for 100% only 80%

[00:54:28] Maybe and then you're stuck because you need that those 20 to be there. I'm trying to get better at that

[00:54:34] I think i've already been

[00:54:36] Worse in the past but it's still there for me. Yeah

[00:54:39] Yeah, it's not something i've killed or I I can just say goodbye to I see myself

[00:54:45] Doing it lots there's strengths to attention to detail don't get me wrong. That definitely is

[00:54:51] But I do

[00:54:52] I try and go against the grain now on where I feel myself

[00:54:57] obsessing over some kind of

[00:54:59] Tiny detail and I think why that's important is when you move energy you put something out there

[00:55:05] You do a podcast you put a product out there or a new feature

[00:55:09] I realize now looking back

[00:55:11] That I just don't I don't actually

[00:55:15] I don't know

[00:55:17] Obviously don't know the future, right?

[00:55:19] I don't know everything about how my product is going to go. I don't even know for example if it's near

[00:55:25] Really near to say a product market fit. It's experimental

[00:55:30] And I think that mindset

[00:55:33] That breaks my perfectionism a bit is to acknowledge that I simply i'm quite ignorant

[00:55:39] So how do you break ignorance you break ignorance by putting stuff out there and seeing what the reaction is in a market

[00:55:45] Yeah

[00:55:45] And the users will tell you the bugs that they notice and there might be bugs that they will never notice even though you have

[00:55:51] Lost sleep over them, right?

[00:55:53] So let's just of course your software should work

[00:55:56] But the users will tell you if there is something that they are very bothered by. Yeah. Yeah

[00:56:01] I think that's a great

[00:56:02] Part to stop here, but we have two finishing questions justin

[00:56:06] We always ask all of our guests and the first one is what are you excited about right now?

[00:56:11] And that can be either technology related or work related. Sorry work related and technology related or not something completely different

[00:56:18] I am excited about

[00:56:20] text to

[00:56:22] coding

[00:56:23] for me

[00:56:25] That would be a revelation

[00:56:28] I'm very happy with where i've got to with no code

[00:56:31] But as soon as this technology gets released like i'm across this recent

[00:56:36] I've read about the recent release of devin by cognition

[00:56:40] I would love to get my hands on that

[00:56:42] it doesn't mean i'd go far because you may need thorough technical understanding even to direct it, but

[00:56:48] If I start having a tool where I can go, okay just generate this new

[00:56:54] ui

[00:56:55] ux design

[00:56:58] Build this into the product

[00:57:00] I would just love that and i'm enjoy i've started to try and learn on replet

[00:57:05] And and begin that i'm not sure it's going to happen

[00:57:09] So I guess i'm the lazy person just waiting

[00:57:12] For this tech to leapfrog it and that i'm sorry developers. That probably sounds terrible because I know how hard work you put into

[00:57:20] developing your knowledge base, but

[00:57:23] For someone like me non-technical of you probably understand why i'm excited by that the other aspect which is more quirky

[00:57:30] i'm incredibly afraid of

[00:57:33] What ai might do and in particular embodied ai so ai plus robotics

[00:57:39] But I was listening and heard about this kid's toy the other day

[00:57:43] It's just a it's like a teddy bear or a toy that's got I think it's chat gbt built into it

[00:57:49] And then that that struck off a light bulb for me I I would bet that this year

[00:57:55] Perhaps 2025 that will be the next big

[00:57:59] Thing that everyone is going on about online is ai plus

[00:58:04] robotics so

[00:58:06] Little creatures walking around that you can just have a chat with

[00:58:10] I would I would be interested to try that I can remember in the 90s when I was a kid

[00:58:16] We had the furbies

[00:58:17] Can you remember those like the two like the small house? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, something like this

[00:58:23] But with a chip that can talk to you in like real

[00:58:26] sentences and phrases and it can be creative in its answers could be

[00:58:32] One a really cool thing for kids and two very terrifying

[00:58:36] For the parents. Yeah. Yeah

[00:58:38] but coming back to the area i'm in i'm attracted to it because again, it's a solution to

[00:58:44] How do kids learn new things?

[00:58:47] And they could be asking

[00:58:49] The little teddy bear robot, whatever explain in simple terms einstein's main theory

[00:58:56] Of gravity or something like that. That's amazing. They could be in their room having a chat learning

[00:59:02] About that so i'm really interested in the positive aspects of ai. Where's that going for education and learning? Yeah

[00:59:11] Yeah, yeah

[00:59:11] And I think with the right guard rails for stuff like this

[00:59:14] Like software guard rails and maybe prompt guard rails where you obviously can't ask the furby how to build a bomb

[00:59:21] Then I think stuff like that can be really cool. Yeah, can you turn into a gremlin? Yeah

[00:59:27] Maybe we don't build in that part. Yeah last question for you. Justin

[00:59:31] What's one lesson or advice you would give someone who's just starting out now as an indie hacker?

[00:59:36] I would

[00:59:38] I would say

[00:59:40] So if you're technical build

[00:59:43] something

[00:59:45] As soon as you can i'm in the camp of that wouldn't you doesn't matter what it is for me

[00:59:50] If it's the first thing you've built

[00:59:52] You don't necessarily need to consider

[00:59:55] How it's going to be a business just building product you have to face so many decisions at every level, right?

[01:00:03] And if you can design great, but you if you can't design then you may have to work with someone on the design aspects

[01:00:09] But just to find something that you feel could be solved by software

[01:00:15] and just start

[01:00:17] a massive believer in

[01:00:19] learning through doing

[01:00:22] Learning through doing so and that principle

[01:00:25] To extend the advice will then take you

[01:00:29] Way beyond that so you would then if you make something and you try and get it out there to use his hands

[01:00:35] You're then gonna immediately encounter what marketing is. What is that?

[01:00:41] Oh

[01:00:42] There are acquisition channels people are hanging out in different places on the internet

[01:00:47] Who might like this? Where do I find them? How do I communicate and you make all the mistakes?

[01:00:52] You might get banned from reddit, right?

[01:00:54] The moderator throws you out because you did a promotion you learn all of these things you write

[01:01:00] You're annoying you annoy a creator that you want to participate and you learn you need to be more polite

[01:01:07] There are so many lessons that just by doing it you're going to learn so that's that would be my

[01:01:11] best advice for someone starting out and similarly if you're

[01:01:15] non-technical

[01:01:17] then of course

[01:01:18] Use some no code platform and learn it yourself

[01:01:22] The one thing I would be against advising which i've done myself and i've seen it in the startups I work with is

[01:01:27] To depend on another party

[01:01:30] to

[01:01:31] Make your vision there are some stories. I think

[01:01:35] Calendly possibly was one

[01:01:38] Where he used a dev agency?

[01:01:40] There are a few startups where it's possible

[01:01:44] But I think to be in charge of your product from the beginning given

[01:01:49] The endless experimentation that in most cases needs to happen to find even anything that's got positive signal

[01:01:56] I think you need to be in charge of your product. Otherwise the

[01:02:00] You can go on that journey of raising

[01:02:02] I've seen five hundred thousand dollars put down a drain on third party

[01:02:08] agency

[01:02:09] marketing consultants, right?

[01:02:12] No, so that would be my advice is get in control of your build

[01:02:16] and

[01:02:17] The one bit of advice I would have given myself

[01:02:21] Is I don't regret it, but

[01:02:23] I've held too much myself. I've done too much myself

[01:02:28] so if at the very beginning i'd put more effort into

[01:02:33] Finding a technical co-founder to go on this journey with me

[01:02:37] It's quite possible. I would have moved quicker than where i've got to today

[01:02:41] So I

[01:02:42] With hindsight, I would recommend

[01:02:45] That if you can find a group of people like a partner

[01:02:49] And you've got the right synergy

[01:02:51] And you're aligned and your temperaments are in the same place and you have the same vision

[01:02:56] That would be a dream

[01:02:58] I would second this since my girlfriend who is a ux designer and gx strategist has started working on the product

[01:03:05] Repodcasted now

[01:03:06] And we're starting to make a more company out of it out of necessity for tax reasons and out of

[01:03:12] motivation for other reasons

[01:03:14] Just being two people who can work on it together is a massive motivation boost

[01:03:20] So if you can find someone that fits your kind of working as an indie hacker, that would be awesome

[01:03:26] Yeah, so i'm saying that that part

[01:03:29] Absolutely, and that's it just get building

[01:03:32] Yeah, just get building

[01:03:34] Thank you. Justin for being here if people want to check out qda or want to find you where do they find you?

[01:03:41] Qda is at askqda.com. That's ask and then

[01:03:45] quda.com

[01:03:47] And then I am just on twitter justin qda

[01:03:51] Perfect, and we also find the stuff in the show notes like always

[01:03:55] Justin thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time pleasure and have a nice day

[01:04:00] Yeah, thanks. Tobias. Bye

[01:04:04] And that's our episode. Thank you for sticking with us to the end

[01:04:07] You can find me on twitter with the username iceballabs. That's i c e b e a r l a b s

[01:04:12] We have a website you can check out go to code and conquer.fm to find out more

[01:04:17] You can find this podcast on twitter tiktok and instagram with the handle code conquer pot

[01:04:21] Write us an email at hello at code and conquer.fm

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[01:04:35] Thank you so much until next time